Sebelius: Couple of Hundred Website Fixes Required

By Associated Press&nbsp|&nbsp

Posted: Wed 2:41 PM, Nov 06, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) - The head of the Department of Health and Human Services is telling Congress that the administration's health care website needed a couple of hundred fixes when it went online more than a month ago. And Kathleen Sebelius concedes, "we're not there yet" in making the needed repairs.

But she's rejecting any suggestion that the system be taken off line until it can be fully fixed. She told the Senate Finance Committee that taking down the website "wouldn't delay people's cancer or diabetes or Parkinson's."

The Democrat who chairs the finance panel, Max Baucus of Montana, said Sebelius needs to be "fully, totally" forthcoming with Congress about the repair effort -- so that lawmakers don't "wake up at the end of November and find out we're not there yet."

Republican Orrin Hatch told Sebelius that he's glad she's accepting responsibility for what he called "this disastrous rollout." But he says he would have preferred that the administration had been "honest with us to begin with."

Another Republican, Pat Roberts of Kansas, says if Sebelius is really the one who should be held accountable, then she should resign.

Despite the troubles with the website, Sebelius said it has improved dramatically since the administration launched a repair effort.

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